Current mood:	tired
Entry tags:	random, roleplay

[ 1172. ]
Disclaimer: this is unrelated to amat wank. I was just thinking, and --

I don't get why RPs ban "playercest" i.e. interactions between characters played by the same person.

It seems like forcing them to OOC to me. And I don't mean only when somebody is playing two characters from the same canon, I mean in general. Like --

Say Joe is a peaceful... gardener from fandom A. But, during the course of the RP, his friends keep urging that he needs to learn to defend himself or he's going to get trampled by invading bandits. He posts something asking about swords and what swords are best for him to use, because his father was a swordsman and taught him a bit. Please! He really needs help! Now Mary, a character played by the same player, is a sword expert from fandom B. She lives for swords and sword fighting. She has a giant collection! She's a weaponsmith by trade! It's all she talks about! She fucking LOVES SWORDS! She fucking loves talking about swords! She'll talk to anybody given half the chance! But she's also a nice person and tries to help out everybody whenever she can.

And then she goes and completely ignores Joe's post, which is asking for both swords and help. Because this is totally IC for her.

Oh wait! But Joe didn't have to ask for swords in the first place! He could totally ignore his dead father's lessons about honor and swordsmanship and randomly want to be an archer or something. That's also totally IC for him, right?

Does this make sense to anybody? Seriously?

And that's just in a completely isolated situation. Unfortunately in an RP, it's never going to be like that. OTHER CHARACTERS are going to know Mary! They're going to know that Mary FUCKING LOVES SWORDS because that's ALL SHE TALKS ABOUT. When they see Joe's post, they're probably going to tell him to GO ASK HER. If Joe doesn't, they're probably going to GO TELL MARY TO LOOK AT JOE'S POST. Now what? Do you IM them and go "sorry, I can't do that, I play both characters"? Do you ask them to delete their IC comments, because Joe and Mary can't ICly ignore those suggestions from people they trust? Sure, Joe could learn from someone else, ignoring all his friends, and Mary could ignore Joe, ignoring all HER friends. But that's just asking for characters to go OOC -- AGAIN.

Or what if a the main villain of Mary's canon, CASE, wants to kidnap Joe? Peaceful gardener, easy target to add to his zombie army! Do you go OOC and tell him no, you can't do this, no matter how powerful he is or how weak Joe is and how unreasonable and OOC it would be that the villain just IGNORES THIS OBVIOUS VICTIM because Mary will have to be the one rescuing him and that would be playercest? Sorry, villain! You have to go OOC too!

And what if you have to interact with yourself to progress a plot? What if third character JANE who knows both Joe and Mary (and is Mary's canon BFF), decides that, while running away from the bandits with Joe in tow, the best place to hide out would be Mary's house! She knows she'd help them! What do you do then? Do you have Joe refuse? For no reason? Do you IM them OOC and say "sorry, I can't do that" again? Do you ask Jane to take them somewhere else, even though Mary's house WOULD be the best bet and it would be IC for Jane to suggest it? Are you asking Jane to go OOC now on top of Joe and Mary and the villain?

And this is with the original characters, Joe and Mary, not even being from the same canon, remember. Now place them as side characters in the SAME canon and the mess just gets EVEN WORSE.

It's just -- so stupid to insist that characters pretend that little bits and pieces of their world don't exist because my god a person is threading with themselves or involved in a plot with more than one character! Granted, things can go terribly wrong when people do playercest wrong (like bulldozing plots in the direction they want by involving 5 of their characters or taking over a certain canon by playing the main character, his BFF, his second in command, AND his love interest) -- but that's easily fixed by having rules that say "NO GODMODING (playercestwise or not)," and "NO HAVING MORE THAN ONE CHARACTER FROM A SPECIFIC CANON (unless it's two/more characters that don't usually interact/aren't on the same side)" -- and most RPs already HAVE those rules.

So what's the problem?

Yeah, I've playercested in the past (in games where it wasn't against the rules, of course). It's never because "oh lol I like to play by myself" -- WTF who joins an RP expressly to play with their own characters? Seriously? Do you actually believe anyone would do this? -- or whatever other -- stupid reasons anti-playercesters seem to think. It's because sometimes due to RP/canon circumstance IT MAKES NO SENSE for my characters to NOT talk to my other characters, and bottom-line

A) I DONT LIKE GOING OOC
B) I DONT LIKE OOC LIMITING MY CHARACTER'S CR BY NOT TALKING TO ANYBODY OUT OF THE FEAR THAT THEY MIGHT OMG, TAKE MY CHARACTER TO MEET ONE OF MY OTHER CHARACTERS
C) I DONT LIKE HAVING CERTAIN PLOTS BE OOC IMPOSSIBLE (though IC? sure! why not! but oops sry can't do that, we have to alter our plot drastically to make sure that it's IC for them to do something else) BECAUSE MY CHARACTER IS NOT ALLOWED TO INTERACT WITH MY OTHER CHARACTER

I mean, it's like this: Joe threads with Mary, then goes back to Jane, who asks what Mary said! Then life goes on, Joe threads with Jane, and Joe and Mary don't get MARRIED OR GODMODE ALL OVER THE PLACE OR TAKE OVER or anything -- surprise! In fact, they probably don't interact much further unless they absolutely have to, because threading with yourself can actually be pretty boring! The whole purpose of this was to CR Joe with JANE. Mary is just a side character here! It's just OOC for Mary to be completely out of the picture due to circumstance and canon and the fact that she is Jane's BFF. Is that so goddamn hard to understand?

Yeah, I've playercested. OMG I AM A PLAYERCESTER. Not because I epically enjoy my characters talking to each other or want to have them develop any kind of meaningful srs relationship or get into any deep plots together (whatever, I'd just write crossover fic then), but because those threads actually lead to development or plot with OTHER characters. And yes, sometimes, given certain characters' personalities, it's just goddamned funny to have them talk (and even then I'm doing it more for the people reading and loling at the thread along with me than for myself). If I'm playing like -- XENU and TOM CRUISE, hell yes I'm going to have them casually interact at least once if possible JUST FOR THE LULZ for everybody else watching.

I guess the point of this rant is -- playercest isn't INHERENTLY BAD (or OMG LOSERS PLAYING WITH THEMSELVES LOL GO GET AN RP CLIQUE GOD;;;). Sometimes there is a point, and sometimes it's even MORE IC than the alternative. Just like anything else, you can do it right or you can do it WRONG and banning it outright from games isn't really necessary because other rules cover when people do it wrong. Everywhere I go I see this epic negative view of playercest and it's just -- why? Why? I don't get it! If nothing else, have a negative view of the players who do it wrong, not the whole idea.

I mean in the end, your game, your rules. Yeah, I get that part. I'll follow them. But your rules don't necessarily have to make sense.

secret because my flist would kill me

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is it just me or is Lileep a tentacle rapist. I mean look at the COLORS FFFFFFFFFFFFFF THAT CANT BE A COINCIDENCE



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